Tag: Microsoft Office 356

It’s an interesting thing to go down in history for…having your very own font. Well, for Dubai it has to be better than other topics people discuss. The Dubai Font (a combination of both Latin and Arabic texts) can now be accessed around the world via Microsoft Office 365.

The project – which took 18 months to process – was supervised by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s Crown Prince. He worked with six people from Monotype (an American firm that has made specialty typefaces for large grands such as Vogue). Once completed he instructed government agencies to use it in all official correspondence. Meanwhile, the rest of the world can feel free to use the simple, Arabic/Latin San Serif typeface, since it is available in 23 different languages. Indeed, anyone of the 100 million Microsoft Office 356 software owners will be able to download DubaiFont.com in multiple formats.

As Maktoum (who is also chair of the Dubai Executive Council) said: “The launch of the Dubai Font to the world is a very important step for us as part of our continuous efforts to be ranked first in the digital world. We are confident that this new font and its unique specifications will prove popular among other fonts used online and in smart technologies across the world. I have personally overseen all the stages of the development of this font, from the first design sketches to the execution phase.”

Chief designer, Nadine Chahine added: “It is a mean of expression, it is not the expression itself. “It’s a sans serif with a lot of humanist influence.” Ultimately it has been said to fill a gap in the market of high-quality Arabic fonts.